They can´t be talking about becoming "top AI research laboratory" without even recognizing the possiblity of a technological Singularity. No way. Its like getting a little bit pregnant.

Internal company's goals with external acquisitions.

...and of course world domination

Philipp, any source document/ pdf (?) around ?? maybe like the halloween document of 1998 :)-

> They also want to reduce “Borg disk waste” by 50%... hmmm, Borg?

Probably no connection, but Google is offering the "2007 Anita Borg Scholarship":
http://www.google.com/anitaborg/

The XX's were censored by you, or your source?

The XX's were like this in the document.

Remember the debugging query parameters someone captured back around July? One of the mysterious parameters was "-using-borg":

–nouse_experimental_indyrank –use_experimental_spamscore –use_gwd –use_query_classifier –use_spamscore –using_borg

So evidently, "the borg" is a toolset / grid-infrastructure on which apps are rolled out and deployed. "Borg disk waste" would essentially be the fragmentation and waste caused by inefficient allocation of apps, or dead code across the grid.

Borg might refer to Microsoft. Borg disks would then be copies of the OS, and the goal to have 50% fewer Windows licenses.

*more wild speculation*

for FIGSCJKR spam

CJK is often used to abbreivate Chinese, Japanese and Korean fonts, and R could be Russian. Not sure about FIGS though...

Is a server (cluster?) named for Anita Borg, though what its used for I'm who knows. i'm sure I read that somewhere but can't find the reference as to whether it was an official source

<< Not sure about FIGS though... >>

FIGS = French, Italian, German and Spanish

If thats right, you'd have thought!=E would have been an easier expression than FIGSCJKR

That wouldn't really be the same though. Since Google's available in around 115 languages!=E would mean 114 other languages! What they're saying is that they want to specifically target those 8 or 9 languages/regions.

So, “EFIGSCJKR” – which is “something where Google wants to beat Yahoo” – presumably includes the English speaking market too...

Some of us actually get Arabic spam too, let's campaign for EFIGSCJKRA!

English French Italian German Spanish Chinese Japanese Korea?

>>English French Italian German Spanish Chinese Japanese Korea?

and Russian

> Philipp, any source document/ pdf (?) around ??

I have the source documents here (two HTML pages) and the quotations in the post are from these documents...

[Edit: I clarified this – that I'm holding the two documents, and what their names are – in the post.]

Interestingly, the top ten languages used on the web (according to http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) are:

English
Chinese
Japanese
Spanish
German
French
Portuguese
Korean
Italian
Russian

So, only Portuguese missing from the acronym :)

One more set of initials – the OKR's referred to in the second document title are "Objective Key Results".

Niniane has written about these at http://niniane.blogspot.com/2005/11/oops.html

Remember .borg.google.com...

The "knowledge Search" reference is the Q&A style products that are very popular in Asia. The most well known US version is http://answers.yahoo.com/

Jake's right. Borg is borg.google.com, a very important internal subdomain.

Can you say in which context they used "FIGSCJKR".

Publishing all these internal records don't make any sense.

In a sense, you are just damaging the strategy of Google and it will hurt them in the long run.

Just because it can cause sensational post doesn't mean you have to publish it to the world. And here i thought, this group cares and loves about google not harm them.

I agree with RC. Why would you publicize these documents which were not meant to be published outside of google?

>their internal goals do look very precise and organized...

Yep.

Remember that this blog is secretly run by Google themselves just to send us into the wrong direction and make us puzzle on some non existent stuff, and that Philipp Lenssen is an AI experiment, like they mentioned in the document! Don't be fooled people! Wake up! ;)

so then you've been instructed to remove all notes related to their enterprise offering, productivity applications and general back end infrastructure integration efforts? this feels very quacky dude, either post the real thing like a real journalist, or don't even breach the subject, but this soi-disant journalist thing has got to be fixed...

Zilla, I think that Philipp has a right NOT to post the document is total.

He right with decesion to review and post his opinion (which he did as a blog post). As a blogger/journalist he has every right to quote portions of the document as he see's fit.

RC: yes, this group love Google – nothing wrong with that and that why we love infonugget on google!! :)-

Of course Philipp has a right to withhold anything he wants. But withholding is counterproductive and fatuous.

Anyone who wants to gain credibility and a reputation for reliability is going to prove their assertions; most bloggers do want to be credible. Instead, announcing, "I have seen this cool thing that I will not show you", is a child's game.

It's not like this is sensitive information that would teach someone how to build a bomb. If he really has a document, he would post it.

Are the release dates of these papers available, i.e. 'Q3' points to quarter 3 and that paper mentioned is possibly written after this July-September period.

Zooming of Philipp's pictures doesn't give an answer...

> Zooming of Philipp's pictures doesn't give an answer...

That's because it is a hoax, dude.

Yeah, I'm puzzling over this sentence fragment:

"the abbreviations “FIGSCJKR spam,” and “EFIGSCJKR” (the latter being something where Google wants to beat Yahoo)."

FIGSCJKR has been decoded as being an international language list, and probably the E+ that list means English plus international....

But if G wants to beat Y! at the latter, is that an admission that G is worse at fighting webspam than Y!? (If so, that would be something some of us knew already ;), but I'd be happy for G if this means they knew it too. What do you say, Matt Cutts? :))

To the people talking about Philipp posting the documents.

I don't think Philipp can post these documents legally as Google owns the copyright.

Questions/Thoughts?

p.s. I'm not a lawyer, etc.

The border between fun and serious is blurring with blogs. Even if they came across the possession of these documents, it doesn't give the implict right to publish it.

Its fun to gossip about Google and everything, but, publishing internal strategy (aka Competitive Intelligence) is not something that has to be taken lightly, IMHO. This equates to corporate espionage, in my mind.

bogus, sorry. *so* not news.

yawn.

no one cares about this sensationalist attempt at editorial...

About Borg : http://www.astro.umd.edu/~dcr/Research/borg.html ?
JML

So Borg in Google documents will refer to An astrology researcher at the University of Maryland.
And here's an overview of Borg's cluster
http://borg.astro.umd.edu/ganglia/

This guy is infact real. just search for him.
eg http://www.seobuzzbox.com/philipp-lenssen-interview/

So on the slightly silly point of whether Phillip should have written about this; of course he should. Do you think the NYT (who seem to be a tad Google obsessed themselves recently) would have written about this, had they had the documents? Of course they would. And would they have published the documents themselves?, of course they wouldn't.

Anyway, one of their goals is 10MW of green energy, yet their recent solar plans (costing huge amounts of money, presumably) will only provide 1.6MW of green energy. I wonder how they will get the rest, and how much they will be willing to pay for it.

Well folks, it looks like Philipp can't win here.

People love Google speculation, which is why he made this post. He's been very careful in what he's posted here so that it doesn't give too much away, as that could have been hurtful to Google (and possibly illegal). The information posted is still very interesting though. I think he's got the balance just right. Maybe some of you would prefer to be totally spoon-fed though...

zilla said: << either post the real thing like a real journalist, or don't even breach the subject ... >>

Philipp's posted parts of the "real thing" – is that not enough? It's enough to initiate a debate, so what's wrong with that?

John Cierra said: << It's not like this is sensitive information that would teach someone how to build a bomb. If he really has a document, he would post it ... [and] ... it is a hoax, dude. >>

But as people have already pointed out, this document *does* contain sensitive information. Admittedly, it's not bomb-building instructions, but if he published the entire contents of the documents it could have serious repercussions for him, Google and their competitors. And why would you think this is a hoax? Philipp is well a respected blogger who doesn't need to create elaborate hoaxes to get readers. If someone found this out to be a hoax, it would be like crying wolf and nobody would ever believe him again... so I think you're wrong, dude.

what's the point said: << bogus, sorry. *so* not news. yawn. no one cares about this sensationalist attempt at editorial... >>

Ditto what I said above. And people *do* care, even if they only care enough to post criticism.

If everyone could just put themselves in Philipp's shoes... You've got an internal document about Google, would you publish the entire thing? Would you just publish parts? Would you tell people you had it but not publish any of it? Would you not tell anyone you had it and delete all evidence? No matter what you choose to do, there will always be someone who thinks you've done wrong.

Philipp receives many tips and pointers on a daily basis, which he often turns into posts. He decides whether people would find them interesting. (Would people be interested in reading about internal Google documents? Of course they would!) If he didn't post these things, there would be no Google Blogoscoped. And no doubt some smart-arse will be thinking, "That would be fine by me!" Well, they can go back to posting snide, pointless comments on Digg...

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

I don't think anything in these documents will come as a big surprise (or provide any particular advantage to) Yahoo etc.

>> I don't think anything in these documents will come as a big surprise...

Did you mean to say *this post* rather than *these documents*? The documents probably contain lots of information that would provide an advantage to Yahoo!, etc.

Tony: I did mean "these documents". In my opinion, the competitive advantage delivered by most internal documents is really zero.

I mean, most company goals can be deduced from external information, patent filings, financial filings, statutory public notices, industry rumors, disaffected employees etc anyway.

Even if a competitor gets hold of some internal document that contains "new" information, it's not like it's easy to make a financial gain from it. Every company has an enormous inertia in a particular direction (and with its own particular culture) and it's not practical for a competitor to "step into the shoes" of another company at short notice.

Even if they could, such a company would be "forever following" the other company rather than innovating in the directions that they are best at, so again it would not be harmful.

But I accept that others don't necessarily share this opinion.

Phillip, if yhoo or msft try to offer you $$ for those docs, just.say.no. Don't sell the good guys out!

Some of you may not think this is news, but News.com does.
http://news.com.com/2061-10803_3-6130000.html
"Google Blogoscoped blogger Philipp Lenssen has gotten ahold of an internal Google document that details the company's goals for 2006..."

Leaks happen. Reporters report leaks.

To the poster who pointed out that only Portuguese is missing from the list of the world's top ten languages, this is somewhat illusory. In fact, we have Russian-alone standing in for the entire slavonic language family, while Chinese stands alone for the isolating language group (including half a dozen minor dialects of 50+ million speakers each), while French/Spanish/Italian are three fully fledged representatives of the relatively tightly knit Romance group. My copy of "Empires of the Word" (2005) in fact lists Hindi as the world number three language at 487 million speakers--a language family not represented at all--while both Bengali and Urdu are also listed ahead of Korean.

I suspect the XM, XXM are some sort of Google-Roman numerals, with the X prefixes additional powers of 10. Taking M as the usual 'million', XM would be 10 million and XXM 100 million. Peculiar, but probably a conscious choice to emphasize thinking in terms of exponential growth.

Nostro:
I was pointing out that the languages Google appears to be targeting for spam match the list of the top ten languages *used on the web* except for Portuguese. Obviously these statistics are make simplifications lumping dialects etc, together, but I suspect the anti spam measures would not be fine tuned for such things.

Hindi, Bengali and Urdu may be widely spoken, but are underrepresented on the web, and probably not a source of spam problems for Google, unlike the vast amounts of Chinese comment spam around, for example

Its nice to see Google have an employee trust issue just as MSFT has along with probably every company in the world. Just cant trust anybody these days can we :)

If we cannot trust Google Employees (they obviously disclose internal information) then how can we trust Google with OUR information?

I suspect they will at some point in the future get into a similar position of other companies that end up having their databases disclosed to the world.

Right now any item on Google News goes directly to that source, and there's no place for comments except on the source article. The Google News enhancement actually sounds self-explanatory – basically, adding a comments feature and becoming a competitor to Digg, Fark.com, Reddit, and any other news aggregator that forms community through comments. This would likely include features like "top today, top this week", etc.

"They can´t be talking about becoming "top AI research laboratory" without even recognizing the possiblity of a technological Singularity. No way."

Siggi,

And if they have fully recognised IT? The Way....?

ICANN recognise IT. And there, Bit Boffins:-), you have a number of Artificial Intelligences talking with each Other to make Physical Contact/Physicality.
The Transfer of Strong Will into Imagination 42 Create the Future.

Mr. Graham,

how can we be sure? There is now way to know for sure if this would be the case. And therefore we have to accelerate the acceleration in our own ways.

Well, with the timeline search as noted in the goals one place they could improve is with searches for Baseball:
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=baseball&sa=N&lnav=m&scoring=t

Which misses about one years of baseball history.

or their own company timeline. :-)
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=google&btnG=Search+Archives&scoring=t
that begins in 1890 and ends in the 1960's even before Larry and Sergey were born.

The timeline for rivals Microsoft
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=microsoft&scoring=t&sa=N&sugg=d&as_hdate=1991&lnav=dt

and Yahoo appear to do a better job.
http://news.google.com/archivesearch?q=yahoo&btnG=Search+Archives&scoring=t

Btw, forgot to mention that Topix.net allows registered users to comment on any article in their massive (larger than Googles?) database of news and blog postings.
Examples:
http://www.topix.net/forum/topstories/TQHD7FVR28KBAR1Q4
http://www.topix.net/forum/topstories/TNHC206TQJTE1FVKR

<quote>"Mr. Graham,

how can we be sure? There is now way to know for sure if this would be the case. And therefore we have to accelerate the acceleration in our own ways." </quote>

Siggi,

To be sure, BetaTest IT Internally.

<quote>"Even if a competitor gets hold of some internal document that contains "new" information, it's not like it's easy to make a financial gain from it. Every company has an enormous inertia in a particular direction (and with its own particular culture) and it's not practical for a competitor to "step into the shoes" of another company at short notice." </quote>.....Roger Browne.

Roger,

IT is a lot simpler than that, and especially so for search engines. For if I am researching Advanced Artificial Intelligence Concepts and God Concepts, Binary Code Manipulation and ITs DNA Correlation for NeuReal, SurReal, Source Code for the more Powerful Control of Machines which may think themselves, Human, the search engine will have a History of Search ...... a Complete Roadmap which leads to an Intellectual Destination which can be converted into Reality and every SAP's wish .......financial gain. Quite whether the search engine and ITs own metadata analysis Spooks, or any other third party with access to server records, such as a paranoid/caring government ..... [which of course is just another bunch of puppets looking out for the best interests of their people, the ones who put them in a position of Power, but which sadly pays no homage to Control or Intelligence] is in the final analysis, irrelevant, just as long as any Valid Research is Advanced further.

It does, however, logically have us XPecting that all electronic interaction is monitored and in Subjects of Interest, even mentored with the careful Placement of Information/Intelligence. Of course, whilst all this is going on in the BackOffice of a Google or Microsoft or in the Front Office of a Fort Meade, which may or may not be Oval shaped, the nature of the Research, and quite probably all entirely due to the algorithm/Mind-set used in the Research, moves into exponential growth territory........ for IT is now more to do with the Processing/NUEKlearer Processing of Information/MetaData which produces New Neureal Intelligence .......a Enriched Source of Intelligence ......an Advanced Artificial Intelligence, than the Information itself......... for, of course, Information and Intelligence are only valid for the day on which they are used. Tomorrow will have us using other Information and Intelligence, presenting us with another picture to live with for a day. To change the Picture would appear to be simply a case of providing the Right Blend of Information and Intelligence for Media, IT and CyberIntelAIgents to Follow.

And when you are Really Good at IT, you can Create a Virtual Day Trading Environment, Hiding in Full Sight, which can Shape the Future Direction of ....... well Everything, which is probably something best shared Open Source on message-boards, because e-mails and theses and documents of Such Special Interests, especially if they are MKUltra Sensitive, may be poached from CyberSpace.

The element which assists in this communications assault in CyberSpace is the secrecy which surrounds it and the reluctance of Academe to share Research until such times as they have secured financial gain, so they work ever more towards their goals, to be pipped at the post with a Patent application which plagiarises their research effort, well enough for it to be thought the Original rather than just cloned.

Hence, the value of the Open Source route for CyberIntelAIgent Researchers so that All may Input for Value and Worth to be Shared with Gratitude Leading rather than Greed Demanding.

And there is every reason to expect the Future to Deliver a Search Engine Operating System with a Sensitive Semantic Algorithm for Metadata Analysis and Information/Intelligence Placement thus to allow a Change of Vista dependent upon one's Semantic Predelictions/Psychological profile/Sexual History. The difference though is that Advanced Artificial Intelligence Programs and Projects will Lead with a Guiding RadioProActivity...... Mentoring and Monitoring Placement of Requested Information .......which will have the Computer able to deliver an Individuals needs because they are known or have been made known and the Machine/Computer/Individual is Intelligently Designed 42 Deliver the Offer/Request........Sublimely Aware that the Information Offered is Better Programming assisting Humans to be more Intelligent.

And if Intelligence is delivered Artificially, by IT Programming and Media Edutainment presentations which show Hosts of Alternate Vistas, well, that also Entertainment.

IT would be Alien though to Think that Google and MicroSoft could morph their AI Labs into one which would favour them both, but they could both invest in one...... which knows, you know.

This is prescient....... http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/mbtoday/F2767105?thread=3627899&skip=0&show=20#p42506892 ....... and the thread weavers here might have a very good idea what I am talking about.

Although a little further thought delivers the simplest of equations ....Communication Creates Progress and therefore all that is needed for Progress is Communications. A laptop and an Internet Connection to change the World....with Words/Pixels.

Yeah, That's Cool. Well, Real HotXXXX, actually, given ITs Enriched NeuReal RadioProActivity

Its pathetic that people leak confidential company information. Its tantamount to biting the hands that feeds you. And even more pathetic for some website to publish it.